“Answer me,” I demanded, getting tired of feeling lost and like I was here for the amusement of another. Even if that other was a celestial high being, apparently I too was something of that sort and I was done being kept in the dark. As quickly at that thought formed in my mind, a bright light came to life in the far distance. I squinted at it, trying to make sense of it. As I watched, it grew larger and was bobbing as if it were taking steps towards me.
The chills on my skin began to thaw as the icy air faded the closer the light came towards me, and finally I realized it was taking on the shape of a man. I held my tongue when he came close enough for me to make out his shape and realized he was bobbing because of the beat of his wings that were carrying him towards me. They were much like mine in shape and size, but rather than highlighted in hues of black and silver, his were white and blue, catching purple as they flexed with each beat. I had an image of icicles in my mind as I looked at them.
He seemed so familiar to me now that I could see the crisp features of his face. His cheekbones were perfect lines that led up to his almond shaped eyes. His mouth was a beautifully delicious shade of pink with hues of blue that matched the icy blue of his eyes. He was like winter come to life, and I wondered if the fable of Jack Frost wasn’t based on a vision of this perfect man in front of me. He smiled kindly, and I found myself desperate to reach out and touch those impossible features, but I caught myself as my hand twitched with that desire.
“You have succeeded in your cause,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, but I nodded all the same. “What is it that you ask of me this time?” I was relieved to hear that his voice held no frustration or anger, so I let myself breathe a little easier.
“When we came back to land, I had these.” I motioned over my head at the wings, but the angel only nodded at me and kept silent. I blinked, waiting for him to respond, and when he didn’t, I nearly lost my temper all over again. “Look, they’re lovely, really, and I’m not trying to be ungrateful or anything, really I do appreciate the help you gave us, but I can’t walk around in the mortal realm with them.”
“Ah,” he said simply, tilting his head to the side.
“Well?” I asked, feeling my tempter rising.
“Well what?” he countered, and I had the urge to stamp my foot as my hands balled up into fists.
“What the hell am I supposed to do about them?”
“Ah, I see,” he said, smiling again. “You hadn’t asked me a question yet.” I rolled my eyes; I couldn’t help myself. I had dealt with preternatural creatures all my life; I should have known better than to talk to him like a person, no matter how much he looked like one.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Would you please tell me how I can get rid of them?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What?” I blanched at that. “Why not?”
“Would you have me remove one of your arms? Or perhaps a foot? I think not; how can I remove these?”
“Okay,” I said carefully, blowing out a breath. “Can I hide them?”
“From humans, you mean?”
“Yes,” I glared at him, realizing the angrier I got, the less intimidated I was by his beauty. “How can I live and look like an average mortal human while keeping them?” Finally he smiled broadly at me and my face warmed under the sight of it.
“Now you’re asking the right questions,” he said, reaching out a hand to me, taking one of mine and intertwining our fingers. “Humans cannot see these things, they have lost that ability, just like most have lost the ability to use magic or work with nature. If you will them to be hidden, they will be hidden,” he said, and that sounded all too simple to me, but he gave my hand another squeeze and I realized I felt much lighter than I had a moment ago.
“Oh my god!” I gasped, looking up and seeing that the wings were no longer arching over my body. “They’re gone?”
“Not really,” he said, shaking his hand and releasing my hand.
“So if I need them again, they’ll come back?” I asked, and he nodded. “So it’s like a glamour? Once I know how the spell works, I can bend it to my will?”
“It is similar, yes. Many other angels live in your world and are hidden in plain sight; you just need to learn to do the same,” he said, and my stomach flopped at that.
“Did you just say I’m an angel?” I asked, my voice nothing more than a whisper.
“What else did you think the wings meant?” he asked me, inclining his head towards me like a father helping a child understand one of the many wonders of the world.
“But that can’t be…”
“Why not?”
“I’m an Earth Elemental; I can’t be an angel too, can I?” I looked up into his eyes, mine searching and his understanding.
“I suppose that’s entirely up to you,” he said, and then was just suddenly gone. The world exploded again, and when I opened my eyes, I was lying on my back in the sand with both Jodi and Steven leaning over me. The fear etched in their faces quickly dissolved into relief as they watched my eyes open.
“Oh, Dios mío, gracias, gracias,” Steven muttered, taking my hand and kissing it before pressing it to his face. He had slipped into Spanish, not a good sign.
“We thought you were dead,” Jodi explained as she wiped the tears away from her face and choked on a nervous laugh. I started to push myself up, and I realized I was flat on my back and the wings were gone.
“They’re gone!” I gasped, looking that their faces. “How did it happen?”
“We don’t know,” Jodi said, shaking her head. “You said the last line of the spell, we felt and heard some terrible explosion, and when we could see again, you were on your back just like this.”
“Well isn’t that just great,” I said as I pushed myself up to a sitting position before Steven helped me to my feet and I started to brush the sand away. “I guess I can only hope I know an easier way to deal with that the next time it comes up.”
“The next time?” Jodi blanched, and I just shook my head, waving a hand to dismiss it.
“I’ll tell you in the car. Come on, we need to get to the hospital before either of the boys dies,” I said, reaching for my clothes and stripping out of the ruined rashguard.
***
It was either really late at night or really early in the morning, depending on who you asked, as we raced to the hospital. My tires squealed on the asphalt as I slammed the brakes and parked along the curb outside of the hospital.
My athame was still strapped to my right calf, and when I thought about it, a warm pulse would beat against my leg. It was a little unnerving. We hit the elevators without running into anyone; it was definitely well past visiting hours, but I had the unmistakable feeling that we didn’t have a moment to lose.
Once we were standing outside of the doors that led into the ICU, the blade had grown hot against my leg and the pulse inside of it was frantic with energy. I took Steven’s face between my hands and opened my empathetic abilities to him, letting them permeate his skin and aura. When I let go, he practically glowed. I turned towards Jodi and we whispered the incantation we used when we wanted our cars to blend in with traffic so that police cruisers wouldn’t notice us, and I wiped my hand over my face. When Jodi tried to look at me, her eyes would just slide right past me, unable to focus directly on me.
Satisfied, Steven and I turned towards the door and walked through side-by-side, leaving Jodi to stand outside to keep watch. I kept in perfect step with Steven so that if anyone looked our way, they would only notice him and not me. When we reached the nurses’ station, he turned away from me while I continued on, and he kept the nurse’s attention completely on him. He began speaking to her in rapid, frantic Spanish, completely distracting her as I made my way over to Dale’s bed. He was almost invisible beneath the many layers of tubes and wires running in and out of his body.
Although there were many sheets over his body, I could still see just how much of his body had wasted away.
As I looked down into his face, my heart ached; his skin was now almost paper-thin as it stretched over impossibly large cheekbones and teeth. His eyes were large and round in the sockets, and I suddenly knew that he was going to die within the hour if I couldn’t get his soul back into him. There would be no warning, no fighting to the last breath; he just simply wouldn’t be any more, like a wasted piece of fruit forgotten in the back of the fridge.
I bent over and pulled my athame free of the holster and it urged me on, faster, desperate to reach out for the boy lying in front of me. I glanced in Steven’s direction and saw that he had been able to burst into tears, bringing the nurse to his side to comfort him as she cried with him, my empathetic powers washing over her. I took a steadying breath, closing my eyes to center myself, and I was aware of the invisible weight on my back again. When I opened my eyes, there were no wings arching over my shoulder, but Dale was suddenly shaded under them nonetheless.
I hesitated when he opened his eyes and saw me looming over him. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were wide in shock or if that was just what they looked like now, but I was glad his neck was too weak to lift his head so he couldn’t see the blade clutched in my hand. I realized he was looking past me and tears sprung to his eyes, spilling over quickly since there wasn’t much in the way of his eyelids to keep the tears back. He was looking at my wings and, in his decaying state, he thought this was it, this was the end; I had come for him like the angel of death.
“You’re crying,” I whispered, remembering the lack of emotion he had shown the last time I saw him, and his lips trembled as he whimpered. I looked down and saw how close the tip of my blade was to his heart and a fine white mist was emanating from it, stretching out and over his body. A knot in my chest loosened then as I watched Dale’s soul escape from the silver blade and lay over his body.
His body glowed impossibly bright under the layer of his soul, and the sounds of Steven’s cries and the nurse’s calming voice were gone, as were the beeps and humming of all of the machines in the room. Dale took one long breath in and the white light blinded me momentarily before it exploded and plunged into his body, rocking him up from the bed. His back arched as his shoulders pressed into his pillows and his face crumpled into pain, and when he fell back to the bed, everything in the room came to life again and the alarm on his heart monitor sprung to life. The nurse spun from Steven and raced to his side as I slipped behind the curtain partitioning off the room as the nurses and doctors descended upon Dale.
Steven looked towards me with panicked eyes, and I waved him out while I raced across the room to Mark’s bed. I was a little relieved to see that he didn’t look quite as far gone as Dale had, but he still didn’t look good. With Dale, I could feel death coming, but as I leaned over the rail of Mark’s bed, I realized I couldn’t tell when his time was coming. I pushed out a breath as I tuned out the sounds of Dale’s doctors barking out orders.
I lifted my blade and felt it pulse again, renewed with the same desperate need to reach for Mark. I pulled back the sheets a few inches to expose Mark’s chest, gently laid the tip of my blade to it, and watched again as the white mist drifted out and began to course over Mark’s body.
“Oh my God,” I heard a woman say from behind me, but to my left, not to my right where all the commotion was coming from. I was careful not to look away from Mark and break my concentration, but I willed my wings to shimmer to life behind me so that the woman behind me could see them. I heard her gasp and felt her shock as she stared open mouthed at me. Once the white mist completely covered Mark’s body, I pulled my hand away and waited as the world paused again; even the doctors were frozen mid-word before a second explosion rocked the room as Mark’s body contorted as it absorbed his soul.
I was careful to get behind the nurse who had walked in and seen me before she came back to herself and all of Mark’s alarms went off just as suddenly as Dale’s had. I slipped around the edge of the doorway she had obviously come in through as she looked around in confusion. I risked a look and saw everyone draw away from Dale suddenly as all of the alarms that had been out of control just a moment ago were beeping softly again.
“He’s stable…” one of the nurses said in shock.
“Doctor!” the nurse who had seen me yelled frantically as she rushed to Mark’s side, and that snapped everyone out of their confusion as they ran to Mark’s side now.
“What the hell is going on!” one doctor yelled as he started working on Mark. I held my breath and watched in fear as the minutes slipped by, but when the panicked noises stopped just as suddenly as they had started and his heart monitor beeped normally, I exhaled. Even as I stood there, hidden in the shadows, Mark’s color was already returning to his face and his cheeks looked a little fuller.
“What?” the doctor whispered as he pressed his stethoscope to Mark’s chest. “I don’t understand.”
“It was the angel,” the nurse whispered, staring down at Mark’s face in awe, a tear slipping down her cheek.
“What?” a chorus of voices asked.
“When I came in,” she said, “there was an angel bent over him, and then when she was gone, all of the monitors went off. We just witnessed a miracle,” she whispered, covering her heart with her hand.
***
When we left the hospital, I took both Jodi and Steven home, watching as they each snuck into their backyards to get into their houses. I, however, used the front door after I pulled up in front of my house. The sun was already peeking over the mountains in the east, and I just didn’t have it in me to creep through the backyard and climb in through my window. My dad was already up and pouring his first cup of coffee when I came in.
“Dawn session?” he asked as I shut the door behind me. There was no anger or suspicion in his voice as he asked and I was more than grateful for that. I nodded sleepily in answer.
“Yeah, but it was just too early. I couldn’t do it,” I said casually, waving a hand at him as I disappeared down the hall and made it to my bedroom. I checked my phone for the umpteenth time and for the umpteenth time I saw there were no messages or missed calls from Jensen. I set my phone on my bedside table, taking a lot of self-control not to throw it. Jensen didn’t want to talk to me; it was something I just had to accept. I wiped a tear from my cheek before I started to pull off my clothes with heavy limbs, each movement almost too much for me, but I was able to pull the oversized t-shirt over my head, and just as I was about to fall into bed, movement caught my attention.
I spun around to face the mirror and saw the little black cat sitting in the corner, cleaning his paw casually before turning his gleaming yellow eyes up to me. With a twitch of his whiskers, he stood up and turned away from me, disappearing into the depths of the glass. I watched impatiently as my heart thudded in my chest. Finally my reflection wavered and was replaced with an image of the ICU where I had left Mark and Dale. First I saw Dale, with his mother crying openly as she crushed her healing son to her chest, and then the image shifted so I could see a happy Mark munching greedily on the tray of hospital food while a nurse spoke animatedly to his father. No doubt regaling him with the tale of the angel.
The image faded, but the cat didn’t come back, obviously deciding his contract was fulfilled, and I agreed. I fell into bed and slept for hours until my mom knocked on my door somewhere around noon telling me to come see the news. The red tide had mysteriously cleared overnight and the EPA had no explanation for it. I couldn’t help but smirk as I turned from the room and left to get dressed.
I picked up Jodi and Steven, feeling like it had only been minutes since I left them, but we needed to get back to the ocean and see it for ourselves. Unsurprisingly, the parking lots weren’t yet full, let alone crowded, the news not having spread yet or people still being wary of the water after such a sudden change. I couldn’t blame them, but I was grateful for the privacy as we climbed down the rocks and passed through the freshwater runoff. We stood on the beach and waited expectantly until all three
of us felt the unmistakable pull to go out into the water.
But this time, rather than feeling coerced, we felt invited, like something was asking us to go out, rather than telling us. We kicked off our shoes and waded out into the water until the dying waves washed over our knees, that being the furthest Steven was willing to go. We stood there, feeling the bite of the salt on our skin and the shifting of the sand beneath our feet, and waited.
Slowly the golden head of a man emerged from the water, followed by two others on either side of him. The water rushed off of their sculpted shoulders and molded chests until they were exposed from the waist up. I felt all three of our hearts skip a beat as we stared at the masculine bounty before us. I couldn’t help the smile that broke across my face as I saw the same tattoo on the chest of the man in the center as I had seen on the old nymph the night before.
“Karcharias,” I said, inclining my head in a small bow.
“Savior,” he responded, bowing deeply at the waist in return, as did his two men.
“Shayna is just fine,” I said, more than a little embarrassed. Karcharias nodded briefly.
“I wanted to express our thanks to you and yours,” he said, indicating both Jodi and Steven at my side, and I realized we were mirroring each other. “My people are free of my sister’s twisted mind and are at peace.”
“Not all of your sister’s followers were slain. Can you promise me that we will not suffer their wrath?” I asked carefully.
“They have all repented and sworn on their lives that they will follow my rule,” he said, “and according to our law, if that vow is broken, they will die a most painful death.” That was good enough for me, so I nodded. “But as it is, we will be leaving these waters to find a new home.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said, but he raised a hand to stop me.
“Fresh wounds will continue to sting. We would give your people time to heal before we swim your waters again.” I knew there was no arguing with him and, at the moment, as the salt stung the still healing wounds on my legs, I didn’t really want to. We parted ways, him promising in his way that our people would never again suffer at the hands of his people, and us promising not to visit any further punishment on his people.
Elemental Series Omnibus Edition Books 1-4 Page 80
